How can martial artists break bricks and bats.?

Question

I saw a demo where martial artists were breaking bricks with their fists and breaking bats with their shins. How is that possible? How can their bones stand up to the shock? Is there a specific physiology behind it or is it all mystical energy...their chi?

Answer 1

To be honest, sometimes the materials are prepared.

If you notice when they break a bat or some long pole on their throat or whatever, be very careful to notice if it's a clean break even partway through the item, it very often is. Or it could have been broken and glued back together, but they usually just pre-cut.

As for bricks, you can either get them extra dry or some other preparation to make it easier.

That said, there are some people that can break bricks legitimately. It's a factor of speed and hitting it just right with the muscles in your hand tightening to protect the small bones. If you are very fast and it breaks quickly, the shock to your fist is much less than if it doesn't break. When it doesn't break, you usually have a problem.

and chi is a bunch of bunk, sorry.

Answer 2

It is the Chi...the energy for the mind and body focused on a single point in the body channeled there is an amazing thing.
Chi masters perform a unusual break...they take a stack of bricks and can focus the chi and send a wave out at a point...so that in a stack of 6 bricks they will break the brick of someones choice leaving all the rest unbroken....channeling the Chi to the 3rd fourth or fifth..and only damaging that one...with the bats on the shins...aside from the chi...the front of the shin is actually very strong..the usual breaks are from Angle attacks...only the nerve there must be destroyed and this is done with repetitious kicking with the shin to hard objects....

Answer 3

What we do besides a lot of training is very basic. You must condition your hand, feet and shins with techniques similar to iron palm training or with what we call a Makiwara. The bodys response to a hard impact on the bones is to start growing more bones in that area. So with repetitive striking (without braking you hand or foot) you are actually building a denser bone. Then comes the focusin aspects of it. When you perform a breaking, depending on what type it is. You must use a proper striking area and the right amount of power and speed. In other words lots of training my friend. Your mind takes a big part of this. If you are afraid of hitting the object your brain will slow down your attack and you end up hurting yourself because you did not have enough energy to break the item but it was enough for you to feel it. Physics F=MA, and angle of attack are crucial. Go to a martial arts school that teaches how to do this and you will see.

Answer 4

Much of it is technique. In order to break a single or multiple brick, you need speed (Speed=Power). Second is contact point. You need to strike it in the middle as possible with smallest contact area as possible (like my master used to say, it doesn't matter how big ice is you can split them in half with smalliest ice pick). Third is concentration (this is where you use inner chi, focus, or concentration, call it what ever you like). You need to concentrate or focus all your speed and your body weight and strike through the brick. This is where people never practiced makes the mistake. It doens't matter if you can lift 1000 lb or big as offensive line man in NFL. If you don't strike through the target, but stop at point of contact, then all the speed, energy and weight is lost before breaking the brick. And by the way, many martial artist has broken a bone or two in attempt to break the breaks and other.

Answer 5

A better question would be, "What did the bricks and bats ever do to the martial artist?" A martial artist should worry more about how to survive an attack than how many bricks he can break. Those kinds of things don't impress me a bit.

Answer 6

It is all training they dont go and just pick up break a brick or bat they start small an work up they train there bones

Answer 7

To add on to bpshark74's answer.......

When you strike anything hard, what happens is you get extremely small fractures in the bones. The body response is to mend and add calcium to that area to re-enforce the bone(s). This makes the bone denser/harder. This also applies weightlifting because the stress of the extra weight does the same "damage" just not as extreme. This is why they suggest weight lifting in order to decrease the affects of weak bones in old age.

Answer 8

Oh I know the answer to this one. The people that usually do this are from Karate or Tae Kwon Do. They strengthen their arms and weaken the bricks with a little but of water. They just do a lot of training. I am in Kung Fu and what we do is just "Iron Palm Training". Just smack your hands over something for a period of time and anyone can do it.

Answer 9

Basically, it's not WHAT they're breaking these items with, but HOW. These martial artists have trained in such a way that they have learned how much force it takes to break these items, where to hit them, and how to hit them so that they don't break their hands. So, to answer your question, there's no "chi" behind it, unless you count focus, knowledge and great body coordination and control as "chi."

Answer 10

TRAINING. Muy Thai fighters kick trees. A bat is nothing after YOU'VE kicked the bark off an oak tree. It's going to take a few years, so get busy.